New Avaya CEO Jim Chirico acknowledged the old Avaya was the equivalent of a team that loses football games by playing a prevent defense, and told the company’s customers and partners that now they have a fundamentally different gameplan.
Avaya was already partnered with Spoken, but the acquisition will allow broaden application of their technology throughout Avaya’s portfolio, to enable customers to transform their business models.
Nectar creates a new Chief Revenue Officer position to coordinate the company’s different channel routes to market.
Educating customers – and partners – about pure play and hybrid cloud options is a critical part of the Avaya strategy.
The integration of Intel’s Unite collaboration software into ViewSonic ViewBoard units both expands their functionality and simplifies their installation.
Last year, IR introduced a network assessment and testing tool. It is being well received by Microsoft partners, and the new version is switching from software to a cloud-based tool.
Avaya Equinox Meetings Online is a rebranded and significantly upgraded updating of Avaya Live Video. It is a service which integrates well with on-prem video, and is aimed at the premium part of the market where video quality matters.
The plan is to rationalize and simplify the portfolio, although there is no rush to settle on a common platform. There is also relatively little channel overlap, so no need to rationalize the number of partners.
Mitel’s acquisition of the Toshiba business is all about acquiring customers, and their channel. In order to protect their own Mitel channel partners, the two channels will, however, remain separate.
Carl Watene of Jive Canada on the company’s partnering strategy, and why MSPs should be giving UCaaS a second look.
Zang moves into the cloud PBX market with Zang Office, although at this stage, the channel opportunities, other than referral fees, are limited. Partner opportunities for Zang Space, the collaboration tool, appear stronger.
Jive Communications, inContact, and Polycom share their top predictions for 2017 in the unified communications-as-a-service space.
Avaya says that the sale of its Contact Center business is not being considered as a way to restructure its balance sheet, but that it is in discussions to possibly sell off other assets.
ShoreTel has done all the cloud installs itself since it acquired its cloud business in 2012, but now their Enabled partners who get certified through the new program will be able to do so.
While Avaya plans to extend Equinox to the mid-market in the future, today it’s based on Aura and as such is just an enterprise play.
Speakerbus makes a high quality product used in financial segments, and by first responders and the military, but it is also exceptionally well suited to managed services.
The new release of IP Office also makes some architectural and administrative changes designed to make things easier for Avaya channel partners who sell the product.
Apart from the typical benefits from certified status of Microsoft’s validation with customers, Microsoft’s policies of encouraging partnerships is generating new business for Actiance from other Microsoft vendor partners, and developing a higher value-add channel for them.
Nectar also announced a second new offering, around Microsoft Skype, with a suite of cloud enablement solutions that parallels ones they had previously offered for on-prem deployments.
Ingram Micro Canada execs talk up breadth and depth of capabilities, hint at managed services to come from the distributor.
